On August 17, 2023, “the Sixth Excellent Paper Symposium” was organized at the University of Sulaimani in collaboration with Kscien Organization and the President Jalal Talabani Foundation. Usually, research papers from Kurdistan Region are included yet in this year’s symposium, research papers from all over Iraq were included and 10 excellent papers were selected and rewarded.
This event is organized on an annual basis in order to reinforce the field of scientific research and publication. In this symposium, 20,000 papers published in 2022 from all over Iraqi universities took part. Among the best 10 papers, a research paper from UOD was selected and won as the 9th top-placed paper. This research was conducted by a number of researchers from the College of Pharmacy of the UOD and others. Under the title: “COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Infection Among Fully Vaccinated Healthcare Workers in Duhok Governorate, Iraqi Kurdistan: A Retrospective Cohort Study”, the researchers made significant efforts to accomplish this study. The team consisted of the following: pharmacist, Dr. Hind Bahzad Ibrahim, The Department of Clinical Pharmacy, pharmacist, Dr. Masoud Mohammed Ameen, the Department of Pharmaceutics, Dr. Ali Hussain Ali, from Duhok Health Directorate, Prof. Dr. Muaiad Aghali Mirza, the supervisor of the research, currently in the College of Medicine. The researchers attempted to know whether the fully vaccinated healthcare workers in Duhok Health Directorate are subject to COVID-19 infection after two doses of vaccine or not. Exactly, 944 samples from healthcare workers were withdrawn, such as doctors, pharmacists, nurses, nurse assistants, and others. The results showed that only 25% of these people were infected by COVID-19 after they got twice vaccinated. In addition, their symptoms were mild to moderate. And only a small percentage of dentists witnessed severe symptoms, due to their close exposure to patients. Also, it was revealed that the vaccine types available in this region were effective on this descending sequence due to their quality and effectiveness: Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm. And the people who got Pfizer vaccinated showed the least infection percentage of COVID-19 among the study. This research was conducted in March, 2022. This research’s impact factors scored 20 last year in scientific journals, which is considered a high score.
On the other hand, the research papers were evaluated by SNAPR Indicator which is a new way for research evaluation beside the impact factors of the journal a paper is published in. 12 research evaluators from Kscien Organization accomplished this task within 110 days based on Google Scholar searching for research papers conducted in 2022 in Iraq. Selecting the top 10 papers was done according to the quality of research published in local and international scientific journals and those whose impact factors were high. Providing that all research teams’ members are affiliating to Iraq. Otherwise, any paper with one or more researchers who affiliated to abroad would not be included in this scientific competition.
In conclusion, this symposium was an attempt in order to encourage researchers in Kurdistan Region and Iraq to promote the field of scientific research through keeping up on conducting research and studies.